So did Plame work overseas for the CIA after 1997?
BC
again" Hatch on TV repeating the same old lies about
Joe Wilson and his wife: that the Senate Intelligence
Committee report somehow discredited Wilson; and that
there's was likely no crime in exposing Plame because
the law in question only applies to covert agents
having been overseas during the prior 5 year, but that
Plame hadn't been overseas since 1997, so therefore
her outing by Novak in 2003, 6 years later, wouldn't
breaking any applicable law.
Before I get into the specifics -- just who the f*ck
votes for people like Hatch, not just once, but over
and over and over....!? Really, seriously. He's the
Senator from Utah -- which is a state I don't know
too much about other than it's salty and that the
Mormons are headquartered there -- but don't they have
newspapers, TV, reporters, journalists, and such there?
What happens when Hatch is up for re-election --
doesn't anyone like, maybe, inform the voters of his
history and the things he's said and done? He's been a
consistent, dishonest dumbass of the worst sort for
decades. That little "I'd help bin Laden again"
nickname I added is not exactly just a smear: back in
1998, Hatch defended Reagan's actions in the Middle
East, which included having the CIA help bin Laden set
up terrorist camps in Afghanistan to aid in driving out
the Soviets.
>From this 1998 article
http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp
"Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision
to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in
covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue
to defend that move in the context of the Cold War.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate
Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my
colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same
call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do
subsequently. 'It was worth it,' he said.
'Those were very important, pivotal matters that played
an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union,'
he said.'"
Granted that this is a few years before the World
Trade Center attacks, but, damn, bin Laden was already
pretty damn well-known as a major, anti-USA terrorist
when Hatch made that jaw-droppingly stupid statement --
remember that earlier, not-quite-as-successsful attack
on the World Trade Center back in 1993?
And also bear in mind that Hatch, like Reagan, was also
a supporter of Hussein when it cynically served the
alleged interests of the US, no matter that Hussein was
as much the bloodthirsty dictator then, or even more
so, as later.
Compare this to some of Joe Wilson's little history in
the Middle East: (From
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?bid=3&pid=823)
"Wilson was also the last acting US ambassador in Iraq
before the Gulf War, a military action he supported. In
that post, he helped evacuate thousands of foreigners
from Kuwait, worked to get over 120 American hostages
out Iraq, and sheltered about 800 Americans in the
embassy compound."
And there is a nice, condensed little bio here:
http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/events/event_files/past/_winter03/wilson
Compare that to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrin_Hatch
Again, just who the f*ck votes for people like Hatch?!
Alrighty, then -- with the who's who out of the way,
let's rebuke Hatch's little comments:
1) That full Senate report did not in any way discredit
Wilson.
Hatch, along with the other Republican spinmeisters (aka
"lying bastards") deliberately misrepresents comments
made in a supplemental "Additional Views" section as
being part of the full bipartisan report.
And who wrote those Wilson-smearing "additional views"?
Republicans Senators Pat Roberts, Christopher Bond and,
of course, Orrin Hatch (aka "The 3 Evil Stooges").
If you bring up the PDF copy of the full report,
http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdf
(warning -- it's over 20 Mb in size)
you'll see that the section in the main report dealing
with Wilson's assignment to Niger begins on page 49 (by
Adobe's count; 39 in the report itself.) Note also how
here he is carefully referred to only as "the former
ambassador."
But the comments about Wilson lying and being rebuked
are in their own little section starting on page 451 (by
Adobe's count; page 441 in the report itself) that was
written solely by the 3 Evil Stooges. Also note here how
they casually bandy about Wilson's name as well as make
dumbass charges totally unsupported by the main report
itself.
Unfortunately, the corporate (aka mainstream or "leftist
liberal" depending on your delusions) media has been a
wee bit sloppy in separating out this not-so-small
difference, as demonstrated by this June 10, 2004,
Washington Post article written by Susan Schmidt:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html
But Hatch, being in on those "Additional Views," knows
full well the difference, but continues to, well....
what's that expression for when people say things that
they fully know aren't true?
And for sh*ts and grins related to all this, take a
look here: http://tinyurl.com/98qdk
2) It *IS* very likely that a crime was committed in
exposing Plame
Hatch repeated a now widely circulating story (among the
clueless at least) that Valerie Plame hadn't been sent
overseas by the CIA since 1997, which is more that 5
years before when Novak publically "outed" her, so no
crime was likely committed because:
(from http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/laws/iipa.html)
The term "covert agent" means-
....
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an
intelligence agency or a present or retired member of
the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence
agency-
....
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has
within the last five years served outside the United
States; or
....
Anybody see a couple of problems with this reasoning?
Perhaps you need to understand what sort of operative
Plame was (http://foi.missouri.edu/iipa/nocnoc.html):
"Plame was, for starters, a former NOC -- that is, a spy
with nonofficial cover who worked overseas as a private
individual with no apparent connection to the U.S.
government. NOCs are among the government's most closely
guarded secrets, because they often work for real or
fictive private companies overseas and are set loose to
spy solo. NOCs are harder to train, more expensive to
place and can remain undercover longer than conventional
spooks. They can also go places and see people whom those
under official cover cannot. They are in some ways the
most vulnerable of all clandestine officers, since they
have no claim to diplomatic immunity if they get caught."
So Valerie Plane was a bona fide, genuine CIA spy just
like in the movies. And she was still undercover in some
fashion right up until Novak outed her and her front
organization:
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=50427
http://mediamatters.org/items/200507150003
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1011-01.htm
So has anyone yet figured out what's wrong with the
contention that there was no real crime because of that
5-year limit thing?
Need a clue? Think spy, clandestine, not telling people
what you're doing, where you're going, when you're going...
Go it yet?
The answer is that: "She was a f*cking spy!!" Nobody
outside of the CIA has a friggen clue about the times
she was out of the country and for what purposes. Even
if all she ever did since 1997 was, say, fly to London
primarily on vacation, but to also attend an intelligence
briefing, that's still agency business. But you aren't
going to hear about this sort of thing except maybe in
the most general of terms because, well, "She was a
f*cking spy!!" So all this discussion about how she hadn't
been outside of the country working for the CIA since 1997
is all clueless BS by people desperate to spin things for
Rove.
See also: http://mediamatters.org/items/200507150007
But again, Orrin Hatch, God bless 'im, knows this, but
there he was, being the good, Republican, lying ass,
soldier as he always been.
Hope this informs.
-BC